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Raptors: Cue the teardown if team doesn’t take flight: Kelly

Though they have been loath to share it around, the Raptors have already set themselves an early deadline.

According to someone involved in the process, the current group has 45 days from the start of tomorrow’s NBA season to prove that they are not only a playoff team, but a sustainable one.

Raptors coach Dwane Casey has called the first two months on the team's schedule "brutal," a bad omen for a squad with playoff aspirations. (RICK MADONIK / TORONTO STAR)

Even this season’s most optimistic performance target — squeaking into the top eight in the Eastern Conference — may not be enough.

“7-Eleven,” one source said. “That’s where you get diabetes.”

If the team does not appear viable by mid-December, they will begin to dismantle it ahead of the most promising draft class in a decade.

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Bottom line — no matter how many times anyone in this organization publicly scoffs at the idea of “the tank,” it may be the undeclared marching order by Christmas.

This includes dreams of squirming underneath bottom-feeders like Philadelphia and Phoenix for the No. 1 pick.

Nobody in this organization likes to speak Andrew Wiggins’ name. League-tampering rules are one thing, but it’s gotten to the cultish point where the Kansas starlet is indicated in a conversation by a knowing nod or a “you know who I’m talking about” gesture of the hands.

Do not mistake this either — the Raptors still believe they are in the Wiggins sweepstakes if they decide to be. It won’t be easy to clear out this roster, especially if the likes of Rudy Gay come out sluggishly, but GM Masai Ujiri was brought here to accomplish difficult tasks.

If the Raptors decide they aren’t good enough, they will take every scorched-earth step to make the top pick a statistical possibility.

On the record and without any reason to yet speak otherwise, it was all optimism on the eve of the season. No hand wringing over what coach Dwane Casey called a “brutal” first two months on the schedule.

His boss was less circumspect.

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“Since the first day I got (the schedule), I don’t think I’ve looked at it again,” GM Masai Ujiri laughed ruefully.

To identify the warning signs, you have to parse his comments.

Ujiri on the early going: “It’s clear that when you have a schedule like that you have to do well, at least up to a certain extent, in order to survive the season.”

He said it standing in a third-floor atrium at the ACC. Therefore, it would have been difficult for the players and coaches to hear Ujiri’s alarm ringing out on the practice court. No need to worry on that score. Within a few days, it will be getting much closer and much, much louder.

Ujiri said Tuesday he puts no evaluative stock in the pre-season. That work begins now, and will be divided into two-week increments.

The first of those is a trial by fire. Six of eight games on the road. Three in all with conference finalists from last year — champions Miami, Indiana (in Indy) and Memphis (in Tennessee).

Evaluations two and three don’t look much easier. It’s a binary decision after the third evaluation — continue on, or begin demolition.

This will put enormous pressure on Casey to shorten his bench from the get-go. Any winning iteration of this team includes an exceptionally limited roster — they can’t get much past the seventh guy and compete with good teams. One serious, early injury to a starter begins the auto-destruct countdown.

The margins have rarely been so thin for any team in this town. They like to say any season is a marathon. For the Raptors, it’s shaping up as a series of sprints to stay ahead of the buzzsaw.

In all likelihood, the Raptors are in a five-way race for the seventh and eighth seeds in the East. They’re somewhere in the mix with Atlanta, Washington, Cleveland and Detroit. They played this same game last year and came up 10th.

Another ninth- or 10th-place finish in the East is an unmitigated disaster for this team. That will not be allowed to happen.

Given the pressure — none of it communicated to the team — how are they feeling right now?

“I think we’re capable of being pretty good,” said Gay.

That’s . . . er . . . encouraging?

Predictably, there were questions about last year’s 4-19 start. More predictably, no one down on the factory floor wanted to dwell on it.

“We definitely remember that start,” said Gay. “I remember it, and I wasn’t even here.”

Upstairs, a lot of people are recalling it, but through a very different lens. The Raptors will play their 23rd game of the coming season on Dec. 18.

By that point, 4-19 may not look like a failure. By then, it may look like a step in the new direction.

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